She knew that she had dealt a wound, and she was sorry for it. It was
awful to see Gertrude going about the house in her flagrant secrecy. It
was unbearable to Jane, Gertrude's soft-flaming, dedicated face, and
that little evasive, sacred look of hers, as if she had her hand for
ever on her heart, hiding her wound. It was a look that reminded Jane,
and was somehow, she felt, intended to remind her, that Gertrude was
pure spirit as well as pure womanhood in her too discernible emotion.
Was it not spiritual to serve as she served, to spend as she spent
herself, so angelically, bearing the dreadful weight of Brodrick's
marriage--the consequences, so to speak, of that corporeal tie--on her
winged shoulders?
She could see that Hugh looked at it in that light (as well he might)
when one evening he spoke remorsefully of the amount they put on her.
A month had passed since he had given the care of his children into
Gertrude's hands. She was up-stairs now superintending their disposal
for the night. He and Jane were alone in a half-hour before dinner,
waiting for John and Henry and the Protheros to come and dine. The house
was very still. Brodrick could not have believed that it was possible,
the perfection of the peace that had descended on them. He appealed to
Jane. She couldn't deny that it was peace.
Jane didn't deny it. She had nothing whatever to say against an
arrangement that had turned out so entirely for the children's good. She
kept her secret to herself. Her secret was that she would have given all
the peace and all the perfection for one scream of Hughy's and the
child's arms round her neck.
"You wouldn't know," Brodrick said, "that there was a child in the
house."
Jane agreed. Ah, yes, if _that_ was peace, they had it.
Well, wasn't it? After that infernal row he made? You couldn't say
anything when the poor little chap was ill and couldn't help it, but you
couldn't have let him cultivate screaming as a habit. It was wonderful
the effect that woman had on him. He couldn't think how she did it. It
was as if her mere presence in a room----
He thought that Jane was going to admit that as she had admitted
everything, but as he looked at her he saw that her mouth had lifted at
its winged corners, and her eyes were darting their ominous light.
"It's awful of me, I know," she said, "but her presence in a room--in
the house, Hugh--makes me feel as if _I_ could scream the roof off."
(He glanced uneasily at her.)
"She makes me want to _do_ things."
"What things?" he inquired mildly.
"The things I mustn't--to break loose--to kick over the traces----"
"You don't surprise me." He smoothed his face to the expression proper
to a person unsurprised, dealing imperturbably with what he had long ago
foreseen.
"Sometimes I think that if Gertrude were not so good, I might be more
so. You're all so good," she said. "_You_ are so good, so very, very
good."
"I observe," said Brodrick, "a few elementary rules, as you do
yourself."
"But I don't want," she said, "to observe them any more. I want to put
my foot through all the rules."
The front door bell rang as the chiming clock struck eight.
"That's John," he said, "and Henry."
"Did you ever put your foot through a rule? Did John? Did Henry? Fancy
John setting out on an adventure with his hair brushed like that and his
spectacles on----"
They were announced. She rose to greet them. They waited. The clock with
its soft silver insistence struck the quarter. It was awful, she said,
to have to live with a clock that struck the quarter; and Henry shook
his head at her and said, "Nerves, Jinny, nerves."